Obama climate rules, solar threaten grid: Watchdog

The Obama administration's climate change rules are threatening the nation's power grid as it struggles to transition to more natural gas and solar energy to comply, says the nation's grid reliability watchdog.

The congressionally created North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, on Tuesday announced a number of steps it is taking to guard the grid against possible power outages resulting from states having to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, which is the centerpiece of President Obama's climate change agenda.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees the watchdog, had pressed the EPA to address the potential problems its climate rules would pose to the grid. EPA responded by including a reliability safety valve in its final plan to allow plants waivers if shutting them down could cause a power outage.